Price Dispersion Over the Business Cycle: Evidence from the Airline Industry

This study provides empirical evidence documenting how price dispersion moves with the business cycle in the airline industry. Performing a fixed‐effects panel analysis on seventeen years of data covering two business cycles, we find that price dispersion is highly pro‐cyclical. This effect is especially pronounced for legacy carriers relative to low‐cost carriers. We show that our empirical result is consistent with firms' implementing second‐degree price‐discrimination tactics.     

中国大飞机产业化的市场约束与进入条件

中国大飞机项目成功的关键在于实现产业化,而能否产业化又取决于市场基础。由于民用大飞机产业属于买方约束条件十分严格的市场,中国大飞机项目产业化的基本立足点应该是储备进入市场的条件。目前中国国内民用航空市场的结构状况不利于国产大飞机进入市场,应当对航空公司作进一步重组的市场制度安排。为了能使中国的大飞机在实现规模化生产之前就能获得“买家”的订单,有必要在航空运输市场重组现有的航空公司,减少航空公司的数量,鼓励更有实力的航空公司的涌现。     

Cost Reduction,Competitive Pressure and Firms' Optimal R&D Strategies in a Duopolistic Industry

This paper deals with a duopolistic industry where firms are engaged in cost-reducing R&D activity in order to maximize their market shares. Firms' R&D competition is characterized as a dynamic noncooperative feedback game where the optimal strategies are affected by the extra-industry R&D activity and the degree of intra-industry spillovers. Numerical simulations highlight the importance of the assumptions on the firms' absorptive capacity (to exploit external knowledge) in determining the optimal levels of firms R&D investrnents.     

基于资源和能力观的内部市场边界确定

内部市场作为一种组织运行调节机制,必须满足其必要条件:分权、竞争和在竞争基础上的价格形成机制。根据资源和能力观的战略管理理论,内部市场边界取决于市场机制引入企业内部后对企业竞争优势的贡献,主要影响因素是:内部市场主体是否拥有特殊资源和能力、特殊资源和能力的可转移性、内部企业的经营绩效、公司总部的资源整合能力等。这些因素的作用体现为内部企业生产经营自主权大小配置和竞争关系,不同的自主权大小和竞争程度形成了实践中权威机制与内部市场机制不同的边界模式。     

Organizational performance in a regulated environment: The role of strategic orientation

This study explores the influence of governmental regulation on organizational strategies and performance outcomes. Drawing on literature in strategic management, we provide a longitudinal empirical analysis of viable strategies in the U.S. domestic airline industry during a 6-year period (1965-70) when it was regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Results indicate that air carriers were indeed able to articulate coherent strategic postures despite regulatory constraints, and were thus able to influence profitability.     

Gender and Labor Attachment: Do Within‐Firms’ Relative Wages Matter?

This article addresses the issue of gender differences in labor attachment by testing for the role of intrafirm wage comparison. It makes use of a measure of firms' relative wages. The results indicate that once the forward-looking behavior of workers is taken into account, women are actually more attached employees than men. Women's attachment is also more affected by equity considerations. The analysis makes use of a dataset on short-tenure Italian workers.     

The Effects of Market Structure and Technology on Airline Fleet Composition after Deregulation

The present study examines the effects of market structure and technology on airline fleet composition in the deregulated airline industry. To capture the effects of market structure and technology on airline fleet acquisition and use, a profit function which allows airline fleet in its specification is applied to derive the fleet composition function of an airline. The results show a steady pattern in airlines' adoption of two-engine wide-bodied aircraft during the post-deregulation era, providing evidence that the airlines have responded consistently to changes in market structure and technology in acquiring two-engine wide-bodied aircraft after deregulation.     

The plurality of co-existing business models: Investigating the complexity of value drivers

Business models are key tools to provide a means of operationalizing theories about firm and industry level strategies, and to understand the nature of value drivers and the role of marketing in these processes. In this paper we assess empirical evidence for a plurality of co-existing business models within firms by developing a typology of business models in a single industry, the New Zealand Wine industry. We examine the co-existence of the types of models using in-depth analysis of seven case firms that vary in size and ownership. Our findings show how value creation is done in the context of interactions and they provide support for multiple business models that co-exist alongside each other with varying degrees of separation. Plurality better explains the complexity of value drivers and strategies for firms in this rapidly changing industry environment, where businesses are under extreme financial pressure. Our findings challenge assumptions that firms have (or should have) a single business model thus allowing a plurality of approaches within a single firm or industry that shifts the focus from implementing strategy A or B or C, to implementing strategy A and B and/or C.     

Determinants and impacts of environmental performance in SMEs

The paper analyzes empirical evidence from 368 environmentally responsive small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in four industries. The results demonstrate that firms' environmental performance cannot be viewed as a one-dimensional concept and that determinants of firms' environmental performance depend on the dimension retained. The impacts of firms' environmental performance on their innovativeness and competitiveness vary according to the industry within which they operate. However, impacts on product and process innovations as well as on managerial innovations are positive and significant in all four industries.     

Vertical Enclosure: Vertical Integration and the Reluctance to Purchase from a Competitor

Vertical integration can reduce integrating firms' trading opportunities and, contrary to predictions of two-firm models, this loss of trade can make integration unprofitable. If downstream units must commit to suppliers before contracting on the final terms of trade, then suppliers will have ex-post monopoly power. This monopoly power reduces the quality that an integrated supplier will provide to its competitors. Expectations of this quality reduction can prevent firms from purchasing from an integrated supplier even though the supplier would be better off if it could commit to provide its downstream competitors with sufficient quality to retain their business.     

中国上市公司股权融资与债权融资成本实证研究

本文对中国上市公司IPO后的股权与债权的融资成本进行了实证研究。影响企业市场价值变化的主要因素是行业因素以及企业的初始市值，于是我们选取了家庭耐用消费品行业以及纺织和服装行业的上市公司，对同行业问各组匹配公司进行直接比较，从而发现：站在上市公司股东利益的角度考虑，债权融资成本低于股权融资成本。这主要是股权融资的软约束造成的企业经营业绩下滑，进而导致企业进行多次股权融资行为后市场价值下跌。     

Sources, characteristics and effects of emerging technologies: Research opportunities in innovation

Diverse technological developments across information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and satellite communications technology are dramatically altering industry landscapes, with important economic and policy implications. Not surprisingly, therefore, managers are challenged to develop strategies to cope with the threats posed by emerging technologies and leverage the opportunities posed by them. Indeed, there is growing anecdotal evidence that firms' inabilities to cope with emerging technologies have produced high product and firm failure rates.From an academic perspective, I argue that emerging technologies have important distinctive features that have not been examined in current theory in marketing, and specifically, in organizational innovation. In this article, I identify several research questions that emerge from the sources, characteristics and effects of emergent technologies in the area of organizational innovation. Insights generated from such a line of inquiry have the potential to broaden the canvas of innovation theory and provide valuable insights to managers who confront these onerous challenges on a daily basis.     

Networks in a protected business context: Licenses as restraints and facilitators

Taking the network approach developed in the Nordic countries as a point of departure (cf. [Håkansson, H. and Snehota, I. (1989). No business is an island. The network concept of business strategy, Scandinavian Journal of Management 5 (3) 187-200.; Turnbull, P., Ford, D., and Cunningham, M. (1996). Interaction relationships and networks in business markets. An evolving perspective, Journal of Business Marketing 11 (3/4) 44-62]) this paper seeks to explore how firms and networks are affected by high involvement by governmental authorities. A special focus is given to the regulating instrument of licenses. In two case studies of protected industries, the pharmacy and insurance industry, we find that licenses are restrictions but also facilitators for relationships and networks. Licenses render firms a certain degree of acceptance, define roles and positions in the network, and affects efficiency. Thus, although licenses can be seen as a restriction for firms it also becomes evident that they facilitate firms' activities related to operating and/or entering new markets.     

Airport deregulation: Effects on pricing and capacity

We use a model of vertical relations between two congestible airports and an airline oligopoly to examine, both analytically and numerically, how deregulation may affect airports prices and capacities. We find that: (i) unregulated profit-maximizing airports would overcharge for the congestion externality and, compared to the first-best, would induce large allocative inefficiencies and dead-weight losses. They would restrict capacity investments but, overall, would induce fewer delays; (ii) Welfare maximization subject to cost recovery performs quite well, achieving congestion levels similar to a private-unregulated airport but without inducing such large traffic contraction; this puts a question mark on the desirability of deregulation of private airports; (iii) Increased cooperation between airlines and airports provides some improvements, but the resulting airport pricing strategy leads to a downstream airline cartel; (iv) When schedule delay costs effects are strong and airline differentiation is weak, it may be optimal to have a single airline dominating the airports, but this happens only when airports' pricing schemes render the number of airlines irrelevant for competition.     

Strategy over the business cycle

This article develops an analytical and empirical framework for examining strategy over the business cycle. Firms were observed to adjust their strategies significantly and asymmetrically over business cycle stages. There was no consistency in performance between up markets and down markets. A variable-parameter profitability model of strategy in a cyclical industry suggested the importance of a strategy's contemporaneous and inter-temporal relationships with performance. Discrepancies were observed between actual strategies and optimal strategies over business cycle stages.     

The industry context of strategy,structure and performance: The U.K. brewing industry

This paper is concerned with identifying influences on the competitive performance of companies involved in the U.K. brewing industry. It seeks to identify key strategic characteristics, relate these to company performance and move towards an explanation of the influences that emerge as influencing competitive standing. It argues that diversification strategies must be studied as an aspect of industry structure, and shows that more focused, limited diversification and regional brewing strategies may be preferable in the context of the U.K. brewing industry. The research findings conflict with those of many previous studies which research the diversification strategies of primarily large firms (both in the U.S. and the U.K.) drawn from across-industry samples (e.g. the Fortune 500 firms) and which identify superior performance for related diversification strategies. The study therefore provides support for the hypothesis that there is an optimum level of diversification within an industry which balances economies of scope and diseconomies of organizational scale. In the context of the U.K. brewing industry the traditional single or dominant business brewers seem to have found the strategy which matches firms effectively with the important characteristics of industry structure.     

“营改增”后高校科技产业财务工作的变化与对策——以西安科技大学为例

为了解决"营改增"税制改革后高校科技产业财务工作面临的业务范围、纳税义务、税负变化以及会计核算科目变更、会计核算变复杂、财务工作量增大等问题,指出涉及高校科技产业业务变化的主要是"研发和技术服务"和"信息技术服务"。以西安科技大学及其科技产业公司为例,定性、定量分析了"营改增"前后的税负变化情况,分析表明,"营改增"的实施更有利于促进学校横向科研项目发展,同时增加了产业公司利润总额。为了进一步推行"营改增"改革,提出合理增加会计人员配备、规范发票管理、完善财务管理制度、密切关注最新减免优惠政策、全面打通增值税链条等建议,为高校科技产业的进一步发展提供参考。     

Union Wage Effects in Nevada's Hotel and Casino Industry

I use the significant union presence in Las Vegas's hotel, gaming, andrecreation (HGR) industry juxtaposed to the near absence of unions in Reno's HGR sector to study union wage effects. I find wages of highly unionized occupations in Las Vegas's HGR industry to be significantly higher than wages of identical occupations in Reno. Furthermore, I detect little impact from Las Vegas's HGR unions on wages in the wholesale and retail trade (WRT) industry, a much less unionized sector.     

Getting bank financing: A study of Vietnamese private firms

Private firms in transition economies are operating in an extremely uncertain environment, with underdeveloped market institutions, poorly defined property rights, and absence of reliable business data. This raises a very basic question of how owners of these firms persuade bankers to make much needed loans. This study employs an institutional perspective and argues that firms' legitimacy positively influences their accessibility to bank financing. Specifically, this study develops a model that links networking, professional management practices, and growth stage with bank financing and tests that model using a sample of Vietnamese private firms. The results support the hypotheses that growth stage and networking greatly influence firms' accessibility to bank financing, and that the impact of networking on financing is contingent on the growth stage.     

天威保变:“比亚迪式”衰落的背后

很多时候,对于一家主业发展遭遇瓶颈的企业而言,找准机会寻找新的利润市场,看上去在战略上没有任何问题。但切记,新的市场绝不可能没有风险,缺乏核心竞争能力,只是借着行业整体形势火爆而创造的商业奇迹,